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Finance Bill

This has been an important debate. Before I turn to the substance of my remarks, I want to comment on some of the speeches made by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. The Chairman of the Treasury Committee offered an olive branch to the Government, but the Chief Secretary to the Treasury seemed to bat it away by suggesting that the Committee, rather than the Treasury, might look at the number of losers from the abolition of the 10p tax rate. The Chairman also highlighted the risk that the changes in the rules on non-doms will create a culture of non-compliance among those on low incomes. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) spoke for 32 minutes. It was a speech long on style, short on substance and composed almost entirely of extracts from other people's speeches and articles—and one joke, which badly misfired. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) spoke about the net losers from the tax changes. He doubted whether 5.3 million people were affected, but as the Financial Secretary knows from her own parliamentary questions, 5.3 million households are net losers from the scrapping of the 10p rate. In a characteristically forensic speech, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) threw out a challenge to the Labour Benches. He came up with his own analysis of why the former Chancellor might have decided in his final Budget to scrap the 10p rate. Labour Members could not come up with their own explanation for why he might have done that.